By, BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan.
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has asked the Federal Government to focus on how to settle the about N1billion intervention fund owed public universities rather than trampling on the autonomy of university in admission of students.
ASUU in a statement by the Chairman Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Ibadan Chapter, Dr Deji Omole Omole kicked against a pronouncement to ban the conduct of Post JAMB examinations, which is not based on sound research as expected from a Minister of Education”.
The Chairman pointed out that there was no basis for the FG’s ‘autocratic pronouncement on banning post-JAMB examinations in Nigeria Universities’.
“Rather than concentrating on fundamental issue of funding universities and meeting ASUU-FGN 2009 agreements where the Federal Government is owing public universities about N1billion intervention fund, the Minister entered into a domain where he lacked powers,” he said.
According to him, Federal Government ought to have carried out the decentralisation of JAMB since the examination body “cannot conduct credible and dependable examination upon which credible universities like University of Ibadan can rely”.
He stressed that a research conducted at the University of Ibadan headed by Professor Afolabi Bamgboye constituted to ascertain “students performance in relation to JAMB Scores” indicated that higher JAMB scores has negative relationship with the performances of students at 100 university degree examinations.
Dr Omole, pointed out that “JAMB has outlived it’s credibility as indicated in last examination exercise it conducted where candidates who did not finish examinations or had issues with their Computer Based Test were awarded extra 40 marks arbitrarily without justifications”.
The ASUU Chairman said “a Nigerian Minister of Education must make pronouncement based on sound academic research not on road-side talk which queries his very essence of being appointed as a Minister, adding that “the UI research conducted on students affirmed the inability of JAMB to conduct credible examination that can be trusted solely for the admission of candidates into Nigerian Universities.
“This study was conducted across Faculties at the University of Ibadan has shown that UME score has either a negative or weak correlation with performance at university level indicating that the higher the scores at UME the lower is the performance at 100 level as shown by the Cumulative Grade Point Averages (CGPA) at university degree examination.
“The results of the research however established that the performance at SSCE or NECO is statistically significantly correlated with CGPA. This shows that the performance at SSCE may be a good determinant of student academic ability to cope with university education because of their high performance at 100 level. How are we to admit based on a Board that award arbitrary marks to students? As it stands University of Ibadan can only admit 10percent of those who apply to it.”
Buttressing his words, Dr Omole stated that the conduct of Post-JAMB has improved the quality of graduates at the University of Ibadan which ought to be the primary concern of government to ensure quality and not quantity of graduates.
